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Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Review Tuesday: Rubicon M10/M36 Kit

Slowly getting back to normal after all the trips that I have taken recently here. And I have quite the backlog of posts to catch up on as well.. with plenty of ideas for what to write about or to show here on the blog. Along with some other things happening in the background to be released and shown soon.

But for now, let's get back to my current obsession of which consists of Bolt Action and painting up tanks. It is still surprising even to me that I am so into painting tanks at the moment just from the one video from Jamie Trantor. Crazy..

For this I have the American, or allied at least, M10/M36 kit from Rubicon. I picked this up while I was at the Airborne tournament in Poole a few weekends back. Not much to say about the tournament other than I was suffering from terrible food poisoning, the drive to and from it was long, the opponents and team members great, the scenarios a bit unpolished, good games in the end with some real nail bitter situations, oh and something about me coming top Defender ( but I suspect my M16 did a lot of that work for me ).

To kick this kit review off, here is the shows of the sprues as they were laid out on my desk.. and I am trying to revive my old camera ( not cell phone ) to take photos with. So still working on the blurry and the focus.. apologies in advance here... oh and my messy desk.. seems all the travel and random work as of late has created quite the clutter on it.

Starting in on the kit, we head for the tracks and base. Honestly I am loving that the kit starts in this way. I am not sure how or why all the details on the inside of the tracks is required, but I guess I know they are there even if I do not get a good chance to paint them up. The 2 halves for the main body is great though. Very solid and makes te rest of the construction of the vehicle very easy going.

I will state though that I am a bit dissappointed at this point of the kit though. There is no floor plates or whatever to put inside the tank here. Normally not a problem as they are usually covered, but since this is an open topped tank, and when we get to next steps we can see straight through to the inside sections. Just a small point but something that could elevate the kit to a new height.

The top plate for the M10 variant here.. there is a choice to add in another ring within the inside of the hull there to make it work for the M36 version. I kept this out as I would be using this more as a M10 version, but put the ring aside for later.

Here we see the first turret. I went with the M10, if that is not evident already, and loaded it up as such. The cannon there can be moved up and down based on the way that it can be built a bit more mobile. I am not quite sure about the back sections as there is a bit of a gap between them, and I had thought they might be more fused together.. but I could not make it work out that way. Nor could I see in the instructions if that is how it would be. So I might have issues right there on the turret.. but it works for me in the end..

There is a second turret of the same variety but it is not able to also be created without missing the inner seating ring as only one is available within the kit itself. I mean it is still available to be built, and therefore used as a variant turret for the kit. However I am not sure where the people will sit within it, so there is those kind of issues.

Here we see the pieces for the M36 turret. It did not need that special ring to be made, and goes together nicely. I used the WW2 versions for the copolla and end of the barrel.

As mentioned earlier however, the turret ring on this one is smaller and required a separate ring for it to attach to. I have left this outside the hull however, but once it is put together with this turret though, it almost sits nicely on top of the hole on the current chasis. Just need to snip a small tab off, and make the bottom section of it flush for the circular space on the tank hull. Quite loose overall, but works for gaming purposes overall however.

Overall the kit comes together quite nicely, and has plenty of sections for markings, and weathering.

Here we see the M36 version sitting together on the same tank hull.

I do like how versitile the kits are, and provide more options than just a single variety within it. Now to see how well it does within the Tank Battles that will be coming soon enough.

But a key thing that is cool, and something that I suspect we will see more of in the future from Rubicon, is how they are compatible between different hulls. Here we see the lime green Sherman from before, but with the M36 turret on it without the ring attached ( shown in front of the tank ).

So I now have 2 tank hunters, and a bit more veritility with regards to what is in my force. Don't need to have 5 Shermans now, but can have a few more options to take out some of those big cats I suspect we will see in the later stages of the forthcoming Tank Wars Campaign coming up..

Now all I need to do it pull out the colors and get this new tank painted up, and the spare turret set up to match the Sherman as well.. or different coloring maybe? Showing that it was switched from a different hull during the fights even? Ideas abound here...